What’s at stake:A world
free of war and the threat of war. A
nation much abused by the USA, threatened with annihilation by US and Israeli
nuclear arms, is accused of seeking nuclear arms no different from the other 8
nuclear nations, signs agreement preventing it from having nuclear arms, but US
Congress threatens to block agreement.

Manufactured Crisisprovides unique and timely background to the ongoing
diplomacy around Iran's nuclear technology program. In it, award-winning
investigative journalist Gareth Porter offers a well documented critique of the
official 'western' account of what the Iranian government has been doing, and
why. InManufactured Crisis,
Porter brings together the results of his many years of research into the
issue--including numerous interviews with former insiders. He shows that the
origins of the Iran nuclear "crisis" lay not in an Iranian urge to
obtain nuclear weapons but, rather, in a sustained effort by the United States
and its allies to deny Iran its right, as guaranteed in the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, to have any nuclear program at all. The book
highlights the impact that the United States' alliance with Israel had on
Washington's pursuit of its Iran policy and sheds new light on the US strategy
of turning the International Atomic Energy Agency into a tool of its anti-Iran
policy.

There’s a clear way to ensure a
nuclear-free Middle East, but Washington is not interested.

NOAM
CHOMSKY

I also received Chomsky’s essay from Tikkun/Rabbi Lerner, who
credited TomDispatch.com for permission to reprint.

“The Iranian Threat”
Who Is the Gravest Danger to World Peace?
By Noam Chomsky

Throughout the world there is
great relief and optimism about the nuclear deal reached in Vienna between Iran
and the P5+1 nations, the five veto-holding members of the U.N. Security
Council and Germany. Most of the world apparently shares the assessment of the
U.S. Arms Control Association that “the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by
which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons for more than a
generation and a verification system to promptly detect and deter possible efforts
by Iran to covertly pursue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.”

There are, however, striking
exceptions to the general enthusiasm: the United States and its closest
regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. One consequence of this is that U.S.
corporations, much to their chagrin, are prevented from flocking to Tehran
along with their European counterparts. Prominent sectors of U.S. power and
opinion share the stand of the two regional allies and so are in a state of
virtual hysteria over “the Iranian threat.” Sober commentary in the United
States, pretty much across the spectrum, declares that country to be “the
gravest threat to world peace.” Even supporters of the agreement here are wary,
given the exceptional gravity of that threat. After all, how can we trust
the Iranians with their terrible record of aggression, violence, disruption,
and deceit?

Opposition within the political
class is so strong that public opinion has shifted quickly from significant support for
the deal to an even split.
Republicans are almost unanimously opposed to the agreement. The current
Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Senator Ted Cruz,
considered one of the intellectuals among the crowded field of presidential
candidates, warns that
Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons and could someday use one to
set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that “would take down the electrical grid of
the entire eastern seaboard” of the United States, killing “tens of millions of
Americans.”
The two most likely winners, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker, are battling over whether to bomb Iran immediately after being
elected or after the first Cabinet meeting.
The one candidate with some foreign policy experience, Lindsey Graham, describes the
deal as “a death sentence for the state of Israel,” which will certainly come
as a surprise to
Israeli intelligence and
strategic analysts — and which Graham knows to be utter nonsense, raising
immediate questions about actual motives.

Keep in mind that the Republicans
long ago abandoned the pretense of functioning as a normal congressional
party. They have, as respected conservative political commentator Norman
Ornstein of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute observed, become
a “radical insurgency” that scarcely seeks to participate in normal
congressional politics.
Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, the party leadership has plunged so
far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they can attract
votes only by mobilizing parts of the population that have not previously been
an organized political force. Among them are extremist evangelical
Christians, now probably a majority of Republican voters; remnants of the
former slave-holding states; nativists who are terrified that “they” are taking
our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us; and others who turn the
Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the mainstream of modern
society — though not from the mainstream of the most powerful country in world
history.

The departure from global
standards, however, goes far beyond the bounds of the Republican radical
insurgency. Across the spectrum, there is, for instance, general
agreement with the “pragmatic” conclusion of
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Vienna
deal does not “prevent the United States from striking Iranian facilities if
officials decide that it is cheating on the agreement,” even though a
unilateral military strike is “far less likely” if Iran behaves.
Former Clinton and Obama Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross typically
recommends that “Iran must have no doubts that if we see it moving towards a
weapon, that would trigger the use of force” even after the termination of the
deal, when Iran is theoretically free to do what it wants. In fact, the
existence of a termination point 15 years hence is, he adds, “the greatest
single problem with the agreement.” He also suggests that the U.S. provide
Israel with specially outfitted B-52
bombers and bunker-busting bombs to protect itself before
that terrifying date arrives.

“The Greatest Threat”

Opponents of the nuclear deal
charge that it does not go far enough. Some supporters agree, holding that “if
the Vienna deal is to mean anything, the whole of the Middle East must rid
itself of weapons of mass destruction.” The author of those words, Iran’s
Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif, added that “Iran, in its national
capacity and as current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement [the governments
of the large majority of the world’s population], is prepared to work with the
international community to achieve these goals, knowing full well that, along
the way, it will probably run into many hurdles raised by the skeptics of peace
and diplomacy.” Iran has signed “a historic nuclear deal,” he continues, and
now it is the turn of Israel, “the holdout.”
Israel, of course, is one of the three nuclear powers, along with India and
Pakistan, whose weapons programs have been abetted by the United States and
that refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).

Zarif was referring to the
regular five-year NPT review conference, which ended in failure in April when
the U.S. (joined by Canada and Great Britain) once again blocked efforts to
move toward a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East. Such
efforts have been led by Egypt and other Arab states for 20 years. As
Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte, leading figures in the promotion of such
efforts at the NPT and other U.N. agencies, observe in
“Is There a Future for the NPT?,” an article in the journal of the Arms Control
Association: “The successful adoption in 1995 of the resolution on the
establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle
East was the main element of a package that permitted the indefinite extension
of the NPT.” The NPT, in turn, is the most important arms control treaty
of all. If it were adhered to, it could end the scourge of nuclear
weapons.

Repeatedly, implementation of the
resolution has been blocked by the U.S., most recently by President Obama in
2010 and again in 2015, as Dhanapala and Duarte point out, “on behalf of a state
that is not a party to the NPT and is widely believed to be the only one in the
region possessing nuclear weapons” — a polite and understated reference to
Israel. This failure, they hope, “will not be the coup de grâce to the two
longstanding NPT objectives of accelerated progress on nuclear disarmament and
establishing a Middle Eastern WMD-free zone.”

A nuclear-weapons-free Middle East would be a straightforward way to address
whatever threat Iran allegedly poses, but a great deal more is at stake in
Washington’s continuing sabotage of the effort in order to protect its Israeli
client. After all, this is not the only case in which opportunities to
end the alleged Iranian threat have been undermined by Washington, raising
further questions about just what is actually at stake

In considering this matter, it is instructive to examine both the unspoken
assumptions in the situation and the questions that are rarely asked. Let
us consider a few of these assumptions, beginning with the most serious: that Iran
is the gravest threat to world peace.

In the U.S., it is a virtual
cliché among high officials and commentators that Iran wins that grim
prize. There is also a world outside the U.S. and although its views are
not reported in the mainstream here, perhaps they are of some interest.
According to the leading western polling agencies (WIN/Gallup International),
the prize for “greatest threat” is won by the
United States. The rest of the world regards it as the gravest threat to
world peace by a large margin. In second place, far below, is Pakistan,
its ranking probably inflated by the Indian vote. Iran is ranked below
those two, along with China, Israel, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

“The World’s Leading Supporter of
Terrorism”

Turning to the next obvious
question, what in fact is the Iranian threat? Why, for example, are
Israel and Saudi Arabia trembling in fear over that country? Whatever the
threat is, it can hardly be military. Years ago, U.S. intelligence
informed Congress that Iran has very low military expenditures by the standards
of the region and that its strategic doctrines are defensive — designed, that
is, to deter aggression. The U.S. intelligence community has also reported that
it has no evidence Iran is pursuing an actual nuclear weapons program and that
“Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of
developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.”

The authoritative SIPRI review of
global armaments ranks the U.S., as usual, way in the lead in
military expenditures. China comes in second with about one-third of U.S.
expenditures. Far below are Russia and Saudi Arabia, which are
nonetheless well above any western European state. Iran is scarcely mentioned.
Full details are provided in an April report from
the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which finds “a
conclusive case that the Arab Gulf states have… an overwhelming advantage of
Iran in both military spending and access to modern arms.”

Iran’s military spending, for
instance, is a fraction of Saudi Arabia’s and far below even the spending of
the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Altogether, the Gulf Cooperation Council
states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – outspendIran on
arms by a factor of eight, an imbalance that goes back decades. The CSIS
report adds: “The Arab Gulf states have acquired and are acquiring some of the
most advanced and effective weapons in the world [while] Iran has essentially
been forced to live in the past, often relying on systems originally delivered
at the time of the Shah.” In other words, they are virtually
obsolete. When it comes to Israel, of course, the imbalance is even
greater. Possessing the most advanced U.S. weaponry and a virtual
offshore military base for the global superpower, it also has a huge stock of
nuclear weapons.
To be sure, Israel faces the “existential threat” of Iranian pronouncements:
Supreme Leader Khamenei and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously
threatened it with destruction. Except that they didn’t –
and if they had, it would be of little moment. Ahmadinejad, for instance,
predicted that “under God’s grace [the Zionist regime] will be wiped off the
map.” In other words, he hoped that regime change would someday take
place. Even that falls far short of the direct calls in both Washington
and Tel Aviv for regime change in Iran, not to speak of the actions taken to
implement regime change. These, of course, go back to the actual “regime
change” of 1953, when the U.S. and Britain organized a military coup to
overthrow Iran’s parliamentary government and install the dictatorship of the
Shah, who proceeded to amass one of the worst human rights records on the
planet.

These crimes were certainly known
to readers of the reports of Amnesty International and other human rights
organizations, but not to readers of the U.S. press, which has devoted plenty
of space to Iranian human rights violations — but only since 1979 when the
Shah’s regime was overthrown. (To check the facts on this, read The U.S. Press and Iran,
a carefully documented study by Mansour Farhang and William Dorman.)
None of this is a departure from the norm. The United States, as is well
known, holds the world championship title in regime change and Israel is no
laggard either. The most destructive of its invasions of Lebanon in 1982
was explicitly aimed at regime change, as well as at securing its hold on the occupied
territories. The pretexts offered were thin indeed and collapsed at
once. That, too, is not unusual and pretty much independent of the nature
of the society — from the laments in the Declaration of Independence about the
“merciless Indian savages” to Hitler’s defense of Germany from the “wild
terror” of the Poles.

No serious analyst believes that
Iran would ever use, or even threaten to use, a nuclear weapon if it had one,
and so face instant destruction. There is, however, real concern that a
nuclear weapon might fall into jihadi hands — not thanks to Iran, but via U.S.
ally Pakistan. In the journal of the Royal Institute of International
Affairs, two leading Pakistani nuclear scientists, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia
Mian, write that
increasing fears of “militants seizing nuclear weapons or materials and
unleashing nuclear terrorism [have led to]… the creation of a dedicated force
of over 20,000 troops to guard nuclear facilities. There is no reason to
assume, however, that this force would be immune to the problems associated
with the units guarding regular military facilities,” which have frequently
suffered attacks with “insider help.” In brief, the problem is real, just
displaced to Iran thanks to fantasies concocted for other reasons.

Other concerns about the Iranian
threat include its role as “the world’s leading supporter of terrorism,” which
primarily refers to its support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Both of those movements
emerged in resistance to U.S.-backed Israeli violence and aggression, which
vastly exceeds anything attributed to these villains, let alone the normal
practice of the hegemonic power whose global drone assassination campaignalone
dominates (and helps to foster) international terrorism.

Those two villainous Iranian
clients also share the crime of winning the popular vote in the only free
elections in the Arab world. Hezbollah is guilty of the even more heinous
crime of compelling Israel to withdraw from its occupation of southern Lebanon,
which took place in violation of U.N. Security Council orders dating back
decades and involved an illegal regime of terror and sometimes extreme
violence. Whatever one thinks of Hezbollah, Hamas, or other beneficiaries
of Iranian support, Iran hardly ranks high in support of terror worldwide.

“Fueling Instability”

Another concern, voiced at
the U.N. by U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, is the “instability that Iran fuels
beyond its nuclear program.” The U.S. will continue to scrutinize this
misbehavior, she declared. In that, she echoed the assurance Defense
Secretary Ashton Carter offered while
standing on Israel’s northern border that “we will continue to help Israel
counter Iran’s malign influence” in supporting Hezbollah, and that the U.S.
reserves the right to use military force against Iran as it deems appropriate.
The way Iran “fuels instability” can be seen particularly dramatically in Iraq
where, among other crimes, it alone at once came to the aid of Kurds defending
themselves from the invasion of Islamic State militants, even as it is building
a $2.5 billion power plantin the
southern port city of Basra to try to bring electrical power back to the level
reached before the 2003 invasion. Ambassador Power’s usage is, however,
standard: Thanks to that invasion, hundreds of thousands were killed and
millions of refugees generated, barbarous acts of torture were committed —
Iraqis have compared the destruction to the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth
century — leaving Iraq the unhappiest country in the world according to
WIN/Gallup polls. Meanwhile, sectarian conflict was ignited, tearing the
region to shreds and laying the basis for the creation of the monstrosity that
is ISIS. And all of that is called “stabilization.”

Only Iran’s shameful actions,
however, “fuel instability.” The standard usage sometimes reaches levels that
are almost surreal, as when liberal commentator James Chace, former editor
of Foreign Affairs, explained that
the U.S. sought to “destabilize a freely elected Marxist government in Chile”
because “we were determined to seek stability” under the Pinochet dictatorship.

Others are outraged that
Washington should negotiate at all with a “contemptible” regime like Iran’s
with its horrifying human rights record and urge instead that we pursue “an
American-sponsored alliance between Israel and the Sunni states.”
So writesLeon
Wieseltier, contributing editor to the venerable liberal journal the Atlantic,
who can barely conceal his visceral hatred for all things Iranian. With a
straight face, this respected liberal intellectual recommends that Saudi
Arabia, which makes Iran look like a virtual paradise, and Israel, with its
vicious crimes in Gaza and elsewhere, should ally to teach that country good
behavior. Perhaps the recommendation is not entirely unreasonable when we
consider the human rights records of the regimes the U.S. has imposed and
supported throughout the world.

Though the Iranian government is
no doubt a threat to its own people, it regrettably breaks no records in this
regard, not descending to the level of favored U.S. allies. That,
however, cannot be the concern of Washington, and surely not Tel Aviv or
Riyadh. It might also be useful to recall — surely Iranians do — that not
a day has passed since 1953 in which the U.S. was not harming Iranians. After
all, as soon as they overthrew the hated U.S.-imposed regime of the Shah in
1979, Washington put its support behind Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who would,
in 1980, launch a murderous assault on their country. President Reagan
went so far as to deny Saddam’s major crime, his chemical warfare assault on
Iraq’s Kurdish population, which he blamed on Iran instead. When Saddam
was tried for crimes under U.S. auspices, that horrendous crime, as well as
others in which the U.S. was complicit, was carefully excluded from the
charges, which were restricted to one of his minor crimes, the murder of 148
Shi’ites in 1982, a footnote to his gruesome record.

Saddam was such a valued friend
of Washington that he was even granted a privilege otherwise accorded only to
Israel. In 1987, his forces were allowed to attack a U.S. naval vessel,
the USS Stark, with impunity, killing 37 crewmen. (Israel had acted
similarly in its 1967 attack on the USS Liberty.) Iran pretty much
conceded defeat shortly after, when the U.S. launched Operation Praying Mantis
against Iranian ships and oil platforms in Iranian territorial waters.
That operation culminated when the USS Vincennes, under no credible
threat, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in Iranian airspace, with 290
killed — and the subsequent granting of a Legion of Merit award to
the commander of the Vincennes for “exceptionally meritorious
conduct” and for maintaining a “calm and professional atmosphere” during the
period when the attack on the airliner took place. Comments philosopher
Thill Raghu, “We can only stand in awe of such display of American
exceptionalism!”

After the war ended, the U.S.
continued to support Saddam Hussein, Iran’s primary enemy. President
George H.W. Bush even invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to the U.S. for advanced
training in weapons production, an extremely serious threat to Iran.
Sanctions against that country were intensified, including against foreign
firms dealing with it, and actions were initiated to bar it from the
international financial system. In recent years the hostility has extended
to sabotage, the murder of nuclear scientists (presumably by Israel),
and [Message clipped] View
entire message

Editor’s note: Noam Chomsky’s analysis (read
below after reading this) is an important counter to the endless drum of US
propaganda from both parties about the threat from Iran. So much self-deception
is thrown at Americans that we are not to blame when even the best among us
begins to repeat analyses that forget or obscure the actual role that the US
plays in the world today, as Chomsky begins to outline (though he doesn’t
really explore the more powerful distorting role of global capitalism, which is
not to be blamed solely on the US). Unfortunately, Chomsky underplays the
anti-Semitism that the Iranian mullahs have fanned in Iran. They may never have
explicitly called for Israel’s physical destruction, but they had plenty of
time to clarify what they’ve meant by what seems like code language with such
destruction in mind—all they needed to do to eliminate what Chomsky considers
an unfair charge would be to publicly affirm that they don’t intend or seek to
eliminate the state that was created as a refuge for Jews. We at Tikkun have
sent that request to Iranian leaders, but they haven’t responded. Nor have they
repudiated past Iranian governments' attempts to deny the Holocaust, and there
is little doubt that the constant calls for “death to Israel"—while not
translated into death to the Iranian Jews who claim to be safe in Iran and who support
the Iranian nuclear deal despite Netanyahu's opposition—are rarely perceived by
Iranians as somehow distinct from “death to the Jews.” And the mullahs'
near-genocidal policies toward the Baha’i and repression of other religious
minorities are outrageous, as has been their suppression of dissent and
countless human rights violations. (As an aside, I want to express compassion
for the Jewish people whose Holocaust-rooted post-traumatic-stress-disorder
still generates a fearful attitude that makes us so easily manipulated by
opportunists and militarists like Netanyahu and his AIPAC, American Jewish
Committee, Conference of Presidents of Major (sic) Jewish Organizations allies,
manipulation that leads many Jews to support policies that are actually
destructive to the best interests of the Jewish people, the US, Israel, and the
peoples of the world. To consider just two examples: maintaining the Occupation
of the West Bank, rather than helping the Palestinians create an economically
and politically viable Palestinian state living in peace and harmony with
Israel; or the too-widespread Jewish vocal opposition to the nuclear agreement
with Iran, though most Jews support the deal. Tragically, and unjustifiably,
this tilt toward militarist and ungenerous policies may eventually be the
foundation for a resurgence of anti-Semitism globally. I have compassion for my
people, just as I have compassion for the many middle-income and poorer
Americans who end up supporting right-wing policies that are actually
destructive to their own long-term best interests—but that compassion should
must be accompanied by our powerful challenge to the policies they support and
the racism that is too often a component of their fears.)

We at Tikkun, while supporting the nuclear arms
agreement, also continue to support any nonviolent efforts by the people of
Iran to overthrow the Iranian regime of the mullahs and create a state that is
safe for its minorities and for dissent. We do so with deep humility,
recognizing that we ourselves live in a society that is not safe for African
Americans and other people of color, a society with many repressive policies
and which, while allowing free speech on the individual and small group level,
nevertheless manages to manipulate the public sphere in such a way that the
ideas presented by Tikkun, by Chomsky, by those who believe that
the strategy of domination which pervades both major political parties and
fundamental assumptions of the world should be replaced by a strategy of
generosity (e.g. our proposed Global Marshall Planwww.tikkun.org/gmp)
rarely get heard by the vast majority of Americans. So please read the article
by Noam Chomsky below! Thanks to TomDispatch.com for permission to reprint this piece.

There's
one major issue that President Barack Obama, his supporters and his critics
assiduously have avoided as they battle over the deal designed to prevent Iran
from obtaining nuclear weapons: Israel's own nuclear arsenal.

An open
secret for decades, the Israeli stockpile is estimated at some 80-100 warheads,
though Israel refuses to confirm or deny its existence under a policy of
deliberate ambiguity. The arsenal was developed as the ultimate guarantor of
the Jewish state's survival against threats from its hostile neighborhood.

Yet as the
sides joust over the Iran deal's impact on Israel's security, Obama has been
silent on the Israeli arsenal as a potential deterrent against Iranian cheating
on the accord. Opponents, led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
haven't touched the issue, either. And it hasn't figured in the public hearings
that Congress is holding as part of a 60-day review that will culminate in a
Republican-led bid to kill the Iran accord next month.

To some
experts, the fierce debate over whether the Iran deal endangers Israel or makes
it safer will be incomplete and misleading as long as it skirts the Middle
East's only nuclear arms stockpile.

"I
refer to it (Israel's arsenal) as the 800-pound gorilla in the room," said
Avner Cohen, an Israeli-American academic who's written several ground-breaking
histories of the Israeli nuclear program. "In all the discussion about
Iran and Israel, one must keep in mind that Israel has been a well-established
nuclear weapons state for 40 years. It has a very strong, credible deterrent
that Iran doesn't have."

"Part
of the 800-pound gorilla missing in the debate is an indication of Israel's
true interest," said Cohen, a professor of nonproliferation studies at
the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at
Monterey, Calif. "Israel's primary but unstated interest is to keep its
own nuclear monopoly, in other words, not to allow anyone else (in the region)
to have the bomb, not to allow anyone else to even get close to the bomb. The
Israelis are concerned that the nuclear deal with Iran effectively provides
Iran certain international legitimacy for being a special nuclear status, and
the Israelis don't like it."

"You
can't talk about the overall security environment in the Middle East unless you
address the reality of Israel's own nuclear status," he said.

Others
oppose injecting Israel's arsenal into the debate as an unnecessary
distraction.

"I don't
think it makes sense to factor it in," said Gary Samore, a deal supporter
who served as Obama's first senior arms control adviser and recently resigned
as head of an advocacy group that opposes the accord. "Nobody involved in
this debate ... is saying that it's OK if Iran gets nukes because Israel can
deter their use."

Samore,
director of research at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
believes the discussion needs to stay focused on the purpose of the deal.
"The question is: 'Does this deal prevent Iran from getting nuclear
weapons?"' he said. He believes it does.

The White
House declined to respond to questions about why the Obama administration
hasn't made Israel's nuclear deterrent part of the most contentious US foreign
policy debate since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Questions emailed to the
Republican chairmen and the senior Democrats on the Senate and House foreign
affairs committees went unanswered.

The
silence reflects US adherence to a 1969 arrangement - a senior CIA official
concluded a year earlier that Israel was capable of building warheads - in
which the United States and Israel agreed that both would keep mum about the
Israeli weapons program, which is centered at the Dimona nuclear complex in
the Negev Desert.

But it
also has become a political taboo - Cohen refers to a "code of political
silence" - for most serving and former American officials to publicly
discuss the Israeli stockpile, which is the target of a longstanding proposal
for a UN-recognized weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East.

Pushed by
Iran, Arab nations and others, the proposal is supported by the Obama
administration. But the White House doesn't believe that the current conditions
in the region are conducive to proceeding with the plan.

Some
experts said that discussing the Israeli arsenal could give credence to
assertions by Iran that the threat posed by Israel was the reason it concealed
what it claims was a peaceful nuclear program from the UN nuclear watchdog for
18 years, until 2002. Most experts believe the real motivation for the program
- and an alleged warhead research effort - was the 1980-88 war with Iraq, in
which Iran was hit with chemical weapons.

"It
would be a mistake to bring Israel's nuclear capability into the Iran debate.
Iranians spoke from time to time about shouldn't it (the deal) bring in Israel?
But that was for rhetorical purposes," said Robert Einhorn, a retired
veteran US diplomat who was on Obama's Iran negotiating team. "When the
negotiations got serious, there was never any mention of that. I took their
public comments about Israel's capability to be a kind of smokescreen, a
diversion."

Israel's nuclear program began in the 1950s.
Public disclosure first came in 1986 from a disgruntled Israeli technician,
Mordechai Vanunu, who was jailed for 18 years and is barred from traveling
abroad.

Numerous
details have since emerged in books, academic research, media reports,
occasional comments by US and Israeli officials and declassified US diplomatic
and top-secret intelligence reports. These reports include a 1974 Special National Intelligence
Estimate that declared, "We believe that Israel already
has produced nuclear weapons."

Yet as
part of the 1969 arrangement to remain silent about Israel's arsenal, the
United States reportedly agreed to stop pushing Israel to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the keystone
of the global system to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. Israel remains
outside the treaty - along with nuclear weapons states India, Pakistan and
North Korea - while Iran joined in 1968.

Israel's
arsenal "would certainly" comprise warheads for mobile missiles and aircraft-deliverable bombs, according
to the Federation of Atomic Scientists.

Israel
also has taken delivery of five of six advanced German-made submarines reportedly capable of launching
nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, which would significantly boost the Jewish
state's ability to deter potential existential threats with devastating
retribution.

Those
capabilities, some experts said, should be part of the Iran deal debate. That's
because they raise the question of whether MAD - the theory of mutually assured
destruction that many experts believe averted nuclear war between the United
States and the former Soviet Union - would apply to Israel and Iran should
Tehran secretly develop warheads.

"Israel
lives in a dangerous neighborhood, but Israel is well-equipped to deter any
nuclear threat that might come from its neighborhood," said Daryl Kimball,
a deal supporter who heads the Arms Control Association,
a policy institute. "If the Iranians two of three or four decades from
now, or another country in the region, were to develop nuclear weapons, it
would be extremely dangerous. Yet Israel would retain a mutually assured
destruction capability that could potentially deter such a threat."

"The
whole point of Israel's nuclear arsenal . . . is to deter threats to the
country. Except you have to say that from Israel's standpoint, the pressure for
proliferation in the Arab Middle East has been steady," Samore said.
"From Israel's standpoint, it's hard to argue that having that extra
security blanket worked."

Some
experts think that the Israeli arsenal could dissuade Iran from secretly
developing a nuclear arsenal in violation of its deal with the United States,
Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.

"It's
a legitimate discussion point on whether it (the Israeli arsenal) is a check on
Iranian cheating (on the nuclear deal). I think it is," said Peter Huessy,
a deal critic and president of Geostrategic Analysis, a national security
consultancy. "The Israeli nuclear deterrent has absolutely no bearing on
whether Iran should have nukes. Iran should not and Israel's deterrent is its
own business."

Cohen
takes a different tact, arguing that Israel's stockpile outgrew its original
role of being Israel's ultimate security guarantor when the Jewish state's
conventional military strength surpassed that of any other country in the
region decades ago.

Instead,
he contended, Israel now relies on its nuclear arsenal, whether deliberate or
not, "as a political way to project power and national
determination."

"Nuclear
weapons, especially for a right-wing-oriented Israel, is no longer a matter of
existential survival. It is a way to project Israel as the most powerful, the
unchallenged, the strongest factor in the region that can project a sense of
strength, confidence and will," said Cohen. "The rise of Iran
questions that."

Jonathan
S. Landay, national security and intelligence correspondent, has written about
foreign affairs and US defense, intelligence and foreign policies for 15 years.
From 1985-94, he covered South Asia and the Balkans for United Press
International and then the Christian Science Monitor. He moved to Washington in
December 1994 to cover defense and foreign affairs for the Christian Science
Monitor and joined Knight Ridder in October 1999. He speaks frequently on
national security matters, particularly the Balkans. In 2005, he was part of a
team that won a National Headliners Award for "How the Bush Administration
Went to War in Iraq.'' He also won a 2005 Award of Distinction from the Medill
School of Journalism for "Iraqi exiles fed exaggerated tips to news
media."

Daniela
Cheslow, McClatchy DC: The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is the nerve
center of an effort that will attack the Iran deal not just on the nuclear
risk, but on its supposed enabling of Iran to expand support for militant
Islamic proxies in Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and Yemen.

"The agreement currently on the table is the best way to ensure Iran
doesn’t build a f*#@ing bomb!"

That’s what Morgan Freeman says in a video Global Zero just released in which
Freeman, Jack Black, and Natasha Lyonne join Middle East experts such as Former
US Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Queen Noor in hilariously digging into those
who oppose the deal.

Watch the video and share it with your friends who still don’t get it:

We at Just Foreign Policy are working overtime to press Congress
to support the deal, to ensure that the media accurately portrays it, and to
give you the information and materials you need to do the same. We’re trying to
raise $3000 by the end of July 31 to help fund this work. Will
you help by making a $15 tax-deductible donation?

What do Bolton, Netanyahu, Graham and others opposing the Iran nuclear deal
have in common? They were passionate supporters and pushers of the Iraq war.

To the opposition of the Iran deal, President Obama recently stated, “Let’s
not mince words: The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some
form of war — maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now,
but soon.”

And now, as the President is trying to broker the historic deal, Sen. Charles
Schumer - who also voted for the Iraq war - is sabotaging the Iran deal,
claiming the United States should call for a “better deal."

Thousands
of NAPF supporters have already written to their Senators and
Representative asking them to support the deal between Iran and the P5+1.

If you have not yet
taken action, please don't wait any longer. In just a few weeks, Congress
will vote on whether or not to support the deal. It is important that the
United States support diplomacy over war.

The Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation works for the abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide. We feel it
is important that, while we work tirelessly for global nuclear abolition,
we also work to uphold deals such as this one that demonstrate thepower
of cooperation over violence.

The Nation
editorial, “Breakthrough with Iran” (August 3-10, 2015). Looks
beyond the agreement to a transformed US policy in the region—e.g. the removal
of the missile “defense” weapons “placed in Europe under the pretense of
protect the continent from an Iranian attack, and for nations that actually
have nuclear weapons to join or comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, which Iran has always supported.”
The entire essay is much worth reading.
--Dick

ARKANSAS SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES

None of the senators or representatives publishes his e-mail
address, but each can be contacted by filling in forms offered through his
website.